Eidolon
by Angelas
Summary: 1890. York, England. Deathless and cornered upon an ever-changing world, Legolas soon wrings much enough change upon Thranduil's jaded existence. [vamp AU, collab with megatruh]
1. Begin Again

i am certain this will be about seven chapters. c: I have been eager to write this, as both a gift and an opportunity to collab with the all-talented artist that is megatruth~

special thanks to Vivian for being such bae and getting me through this with her wonderful words and advice3

**oOo**

The ocean has frosted, and the skies are always starless.

Legolas can endure this no more, subsisting upon the crags of Latvia with nothing but the dread presence of his father to linger in the empty cold.

And their homes have always been cavernous; hewn in rock and freezing stone. Candlelight, wine, empty rooms, and nothing more.

For all along—pinned and nestled low beneath the choking wing of Thranduil—every last door and window had gone by locked and thrice times sealed throughout each of the one hundred and fifty five joyless years they'd experienced in the grey silence of this Baltic fog. Wary and guarded they've been despite the scores of troves upon groves that had cut them off from perhaps coming across the nearest settled farm.

Here, where there is no light nor sight of sunset. And sunrise, even less.

No kiss of lips or feel of touch. No taste of water, nor the scented lures of summer fruit.

There is only ever this, the tumid blues of his newly blooded veins, lovesick with the thought of death.

For the great ocean calls his name, lurid whispers in the dark, sweet and canorous with dreams of warmth and yellow sunrays. It's all he wants.

Yet, midst his despair: Legolas knows that Thranduil knows. All of it.

Knows that his father fears it most when he sees him balanced on the rim of his balcony, hair lashing against the white skin of his cheeks, stone cracking from underneath the input of his weight. Knows that the sharpened slags beneath beckon him like no other thing to perhaps go forth and fling himself to some sixteen hundred ells below and towards the vicious snarling of the sea.

It is only out of selfish panic, Legolas thinks, that Thranduil's pupils heighten before he thinks to look then to one side of the room, there, where Legolas knows lies the bloodied corpse of some young woman he once ago wished he could have one day held: snapped at the neck, glass-eyed, emptied—torn to pieces.

Now Thranduil can only cave;

Can only reach out his shaking hand and mindlessly beg, granting Legolas, at last, his truest wish of England.

**oOo**

They leave the next day, and never look back.

No one mentions it, no one speaks of it, and when their permanent absence at last becomes noticed, only the most holy and superstitious climb and labor the peaks of the crag to tear down what remained of their presence, burning and tossing all that remained (riches and clothing and paintings and whatever else that hung against the walls) deep into the forgotten dells of the ocean.

No one wishes to remember, not with rosaries clutched like melting diamonds in their hands, but if some do, it is only ever in whispers that they thank the cross for the ship that took the pale demons somewhere far from the moon-lit shores of Riga.

**oOo**

For a week they travel, but only when the sun lingers least.

Through ship they land on the icy isles of Denmark.

By ferry they cross the North Sea.

And when at last they land at the crowded docks of Grimsby, the fair town of Leeds is but three hours off by train.

Thranduil stresses that Grimsby is just as fine. That here, in the deep pith of this dank and dismal town, none will know their names. That the law is weak. That they could stay for a month or maybe two and then find respite amongst the bleak outskirts of Germany, where he insists that there are already so many countless acres to his name amidst still-standing property.

But Legolas retorts only with disgust on his face, and says that his wish lies within the leys of England's borders, and no other place. That he can bare it no longer: the pang of anonymity, of barely just existing. That now—when the world itself has fared and settled so far beyond that of just brick and stone and waxen tapers—he wants not only to be feared and gandered, but _seen_.

This time, Thranduil thinks of nothing to say in upshot.

He cannot say no when saying no means he loses all that's left.

Not with his son so close, lovelorn and foolish, so full of quiet hate.

And so they board the soonest train in silence, and do not speak again.

**oOo**

They reach Leeds faster than expected.

It is cold, and clear wet frost cakes along the black concrete of the streets.

Indeed there are more people here, but not too many more. The town is less fetid in its general smell, and there are buildings that tower and crowd against one another like hefted up cards, offering just enough shadow come the early hours of daylight.

It is a fair enough place, Thranduil supposes. For just a few months. Vast, dark. Away from the oceans.

Behind them, the train leaves them in a smog-ridden rush.

Side by side, they are tall and painfully foreign. They are gawked at and stared at, never once greeted. Their skin is too fair, their hair is too long. Their eyes are fireflies in the moonlight. They are perhaps a head taller than most of the men that pass them by. They wear what few could ever dream to afford. Thranduil can feel Legolas' discomfort. He knows this is not what his son had hoped for: the effortless cruelty of those he sought most.

But time amongst those that yet dream is nothing if not fleeting. People scurry and bustle throughout what remains of the evening hour, dispersing by the clusters in several different directions until it is only the two of them standing within the almost-darkness of the station's moth-ridden lamplight.

Thranduil smiles. Amidst the unkindness of strangers, there are always admirers. He stares a young woman down, watches her fall into lovesick spell. He could take her now if he wanted. Could walk over and charm her collar wide open so that he may bleed her bone-dry into the fell thirst of his mouth. He wonders if Legolas has ever allowed himself to feel this, such ravenous need, the thrill or the _prowl._

On a curious whim, he turns towards his son. His brow is set low and lined, fixed into place. His thin lips are pressed, looking almost too entirely graceless with his two valises held especially tight in each of his fists.

"Are you not pleased?" Thranduil asks him in a wry whisper. "Is this not all that you wanted?"

"I will wait for the next to arrive," Legolas tells him after a moment, motioning towards a small family huddled for warmth against the station's brick wall. "They wait for York. They speak of bridges and river ports. It isn't far."

There is little that Thranduil says from that point on that is not utterly useless in the swaying of his son. And so they wait and board the next train.

The risk is far too great if he does not.

**oOo**

In the silence, Thranduil wishes that he could take it, _do it_.

Snap the boy's wretched neck and run.

**oOo**

They settle into York on the morrow, and promptly hire a land steward.

The River Ouse besets the area,splits the city in half.

The town itself is smaller in size, humble in its architecture but never in its insistence of fog.

There are nine different bridges, and sixteen lesser others which lead and cross into the narrow outskirts of River Foss.

All smells of old water, rockweed, and moss.

In the middle of the southern bank and not far from the main market is the Lendal Bridge of which Legolas seems to be irrevocably drawn. It oversees the main square and past farther gates of vast gated gardens which lead into extravagant stucco mansions of perhaps four stories in size.

There is also a theatre.

"Here," Legolas says, and it is the first word he's spoken since they left the train behind.

He turns to the land steward who has already spent nearly the whole of the evening at their side, all but fruitless in his efforts of sale.

"Here, lad?"

"Yes. Are there any properties in this area? Any at all?"

Thranduil's teeth rake inside his mouth. The steward turns on his heel to face him as if for permission. He is both the parent and the client, after all. But Thranduil only lowers his eyes.

So the steward looks to Legolas once more, and after a moment, he nods.

"There is a manor amongst those leading to the Theatre Royal that is currently vacant, but—"

"We'll take it."

"Is this manor gated?" Thranduil interjects.

"It is metal-gated, my lord."

"And its size?"

"Three floors."

Thranduil can already feel the excitement brimming on Legolas' face. It's nothing, if not sickening.

"You were to say something," Thranduil says coolly, approaching the smaller man with his hands clasped behind his back. "Before my son rudely interrupted."

The steward nods, shrinks into himself like a mouse caught fat in its lair. Thranduil towers over him, darkens him into the bough of his shadow. The moon is glum and half eaten. The area is clouded and dim, and the river sways gently beneath them.

Legolas watches Thranduil closely, his breath drawn quicker than before. It is a habit he cannot bring himself to kill all of this century later:

The pretend need to breathe, unfelt breath he secretly wills into the black rot of his lungs.

He knows now in an almost-dread that his father hungers. That his father's appetite is a cold red storm that never stops.

"Y-yes, my lord," says the steward, his receding steps stopped short by the silvern paling of the bridge. "It is very old. I cannot speak grandly of its interior, it has gone so long untouched—but it is its tall and vernal gardens, sire, that are madly sought after and prized." He pauses, clearing his throat. "My lord, it is very expensive."

Thranduil smiles, and it is a wicked thing to behold. Even in the deep dark the fangs in his mouth shimmer with thirst.

He knows full well how carefully Legolas is watching him.

It is a feeling better than blood.

"There isn't a price that would keep me," Thranduil tells the steward at last, backing away. "Please lead us."

The steward does.

Legolas, pale and stiff, finds room enough to release his breath and follows four steps behind.

**oOo**

It is massive in size.

The gardens that surround it are untamed and knotted.

Vegetal vine and briar alike.

Nowhere near the stone alcazar they previously resided in amongst Latvian crags, but its stairs are winding and its doors are endless, and there are windows with no iron bars.

There are layers of dust at every lode and ridge, the wood creaks and groans with age, but the sheer elegance of its scheme is all the louder, and its chandelier is all the brighter with its small and unwavering…flames?

"Are those candles?" Legolas asks.

"No, lad," the steward tells him, prudent in the unloading of his briefcase on a nearby table. "It is gas powered. But the glass tiers are detachable, in the preferred case of tapers."

"Not candles, then…" Legolas repeats, staring fervently at the ceiling.

Thranduil chuckles. The sound echoes throughout.

"Forgive my young and foolish son. He must be worn from our travels."

The steward nods, says nothing further.

**oOo**

It doesn't take long for Thranduil to decide that this will indeed be their new home.

For the time allotted, no more than three months, Thranduil supposes, this would make do.

The purchase is quick and seamless. The steward does not ask many questions, but Legolas can see the quiet suspicion and daunt distrust in the man's beady eyes as Thranduil signs paper after paper as if he'd already done it one thousand times before.

Amid the forbearing hour of silence and form-filling, Thranduil stresses his unrest of solicitors. Of marketers, dealers, venders, or of anyone, really, and demands a locksmith by the coming evening to replace and to fix in new fastenings to each and every door.

The steward agrees and promises to make arrangements.

The purchase is finalized, and Legolas watches from the corner of his eye as the man reaches to shake his father's hand. When contact is made, the man flinches back as if shocked.

Legolas knows that Thranduil's hands are dry ice.

The man leaves, doesn't look back.

**oOo**

The next night, the locks are changed.

Thranduil oversees each door until he is satisfied.

Legolas hasn't shown himself since the previous day. Thranduil thinks for a moment that perhaps the foolish boy has gone into the outside by himself, but the notion is quickly discarded.

Legolas would brave no such feat, especially now, to face the realities of this crude and savage world without his father's hand present to clutch on to in the darkness.

Thranduil laughs.

He looks through the cracked glass of one of the foyer windows, and sees that it is a woeful afternoon. No birds, no life. No sun. He drinks the wine from his chalice but does not taste, only just senses the weight of the liquid dispersing somewhere into the cold flesh of his throat, never to sate the enormity of his thirst. But oh, what well it does to whet it.

He drinks the bottle to the pith, and realizes there is no other to replace it. He stares at the empty space in which the walls immure him—raw and cruel—wherein this grand and miserable edifice, he is alone with an imprudent son and a merciless god that must only detest him. He cannot remember the last time he threaded his fingers into a lock of hair that was not his own, cannot think of warmth or kindness.

He is dead where others cannot touch, shapeless in his loathing for all things he cannot have. And he _has_, but never enough.

He grits a curse and toils his hair behind the length of one ear. It is sharper in its salience now that he has not fed. He realizes through the murk of his reflection that his skin has gone pallid. His lips, he dreads, are nearly bone-white.

He brings both his hands to clench at the rim of a wooden dresser and snarls into the heavy echoes of the room.

There is a vicious ache he can no longer flout taking root inside the undermost basal of his being. He sucks in a breath he does not need and looks to the mirror that mocks him.

Indeed what he wears draws off attention from the utter stillness of his pulse. Gilt threads at the hem of his cutaway lead down to the black leather of his boots. Gloves cover his hands. He can see the veins at the side of his neck swell into plain sight. He buttons up, looks away.

Legolas is standing at the very top of the staircase, still as ice, looking down at him.

"Do you revel now in what you see," Thranduil growls. "Now that you have _leeched _and complained."

"Had I pity for the sight of you," Legolas says. "But I have nothing."

"Ungrateful boy," chuckles Thranduil. "Wayward in your folly, you've never known what it is to have _nothing_."

An explosion of glass, a feral hiss, and Thranduil leaves the shattered mirror behind, along with the silence.

**oOo**

He makes way through the wilted grass of the front gardens and does not lock the metal gate.

The Lendal Bridge is not far, and so he slows in his steps.

There are people that he comes across, yes, but very few. They clinch into themselves underneath the blind of umbrellas to avoid the winds that are quite strong enough to whip the length of Thranduil's hair back and forth.

He quickly places the heft of three strands to cover over the knife-ends of his ears, careful in tucking the rest against the bloodless crescent of his neck so that in this way he may not be so wary that it might suddenly flit away.

Few are daring enough to look in his direction, either way. He is a pale star amongst a gray sky, luring and lucent. He knows this.

He crosses the bridge and sees that there is a scampering crowd in the market square. Women saunter and giggle into each other's ears, flanked tightly inside their huge and laminous gowns, veiled bonnets on their heads. The men hold canes in their hands. Most are dark of hair. Some wear hats, some bearded. All walk with hollow purpose in their stride.

The hunger that wracks the net of Thranduil's innards hones with each person that passes him by. There are young women that simper at him, that tempt him with their dipped crested collars (and _oh_, how their pulse throbs), the innocent bat of their eyes—

Thranduil is helpless not to suddenly squint at the familiar feeling of needle-wounds ripping themselves open inside the duct of his mouth, cutting, in turn, the red flesh of his tongue.

He has little choice but to swallow.

He tastes his own blood.

Like dust-ash and rot.

He knows now that he can control the tines that damn him no longer, and so he idles little and instead takes to the sidewalk of the opposite road where he knows there will be an alcohol vender.

Once there, he hauls open the door.

Bells chime.

On his glove, there is snow.

**oOo**

He walks in and carefully ungloves his hands.

But he bothers only because it is York tradition when entering shop.

He must adhere, now that his thirst is all but caving him. At least in this way the wine will placate well until the dusk. But no longer.

His skin binds by the inch at the thrill of the thought.

An old man greets him at the counter.

"Milord, how may I serve you?"

"Montrachet," Thranduil tells him. "White."

The man nods and goes into the back. Thranduil waits. The foul taste in his mouth remains. He can hear the sound of children knelling in from the streets. They race on the sidewalks, singing psalms at the top of their lungs. Callow and useless and pious: he is reminded of Legolas. His eyes narrow, his jaw clenches rough.

He imagines that if his son were not what he is, Legolas would kneel gladly before the cross. Praying, crooning, basking in the light of a yellow sun Thranduil remembers not.

He feels like he might lose what is left of his constraint, feels his hands begin to shake in the violence he chains, but the old man appears once more before him just in time.

"Here you are, milord."

Thranduil nods, pays his due, and takes the bundle into his arm.

"Good day," he says.

He leaves immediately, doesn't bother with his gloves.

**oOo**

When he exits, Thranduil nearly stumbles.

But only because there is someone there to impede his path.

His mind strays, his skin is strung tight, and so he loses his grip. He drops the bottle but knows he must not, by any means, react on reflex.

He girds himself to hear the sharp eruption of glass, of wasted liquid and of his wavering patience alike, but it never comes. The man, by some miracle, has managed to catch the bottle with one hand a mere five inches from the ground.

Thranduil steps back, softly clears his throat.

"Pardon me," he says. "My thoughts lied elsewhere."

The man stands and concedes him with a half-smile, offers him the bottle. Thranduil accepts the gesture. Despite his own caution, he lingers;

For there is a quiet blue somber now that looks back at him midst the gentle dropping of snow. Wave upon wave of black and silver hair that falls like a Viking king's mane down a pair of broad shoulders. Bearded, crisp-jawed. Sharp English nose.

The man wears a coat that is lightly furred at the collar. Gray. He is tall and virile where others are not.

Thranduil falters. He would walk away now as he should. But he doesn't.

The voice that is let to the air in between them is an imminent storm.

"No, it is I who has been rude."

Thranduil, not once looking away, tilts his head slightly to the side in further gratitude. The man mimics him in return, wishes him a good day, and goes promptly through the shop's door.

It is quick and strange and meaningless; a stranger with a casual kindness to give.

Yet, Thranduil is left standing.

He crosses the street and feigns interest in an old woman's fruit stand. With the corner of his eye he watches. A few minutes pass and the same man from before steps out of the shop with a small package in his hand.

Thranduil turns, hesitates. There are others rushing towards that very same direction from the middle-most of the street:

A woman (black of hair and all flowing skirts) and two young boys.

She takes the man's arm in hers as if she'd known him for years. The children jump at their feet.

"Thorin, love," she begins with a smile.

But Thranduil does not care for the rest.

**oOo**


	2. None of Both

I leave for travels today, so I felt I should further the story at least a bit before I left. o; hence, it's shortness~

**oOo**

A husband and a father, then.

Thranduil, amidst some manner of madness, orders the old woman to bag him a bushel of her ripest apples. She scurries to his demand. He feigns impatience and turns, observes the opposite street from underneath the narrow discretion of his eyes.

The four of them stroll along the sidewalk.

Both boys follow at either side, bickering amid the noise. One is fair-haired, dapper and older. The other is shorter, all flailing limbs and with marks of grime strayed all across his face. Of the two, he seems the most like his mother. She twirls in her stride, and always her long and wild ropes of hair follow like coiled banners at her back. She clings to Thorin's arm, a jangling latch that never stops. Indeed there is an unusual symmetry etched into the clever lines of her face. Tall, for a woman.

She is loud when Thorin is quiet. She laughs and frolics where he chooses not. She is a hammer struck heavy into the soft of the snow. Brazen, obnoxious, mannish in the floral spurs of her skirts. Yet, he holds her close—so close and tight Thorin keeps her—like a thing that might tear or perish if for a moment he fails.

And he is gallant. Ever-watching.

The woman leans in, cranes her neck up so that she may peck thrice at his cheek. He smiles at last. She sniggers like a child and unhooks from his brace, prancing forward and allowing herself to fall backward a few steps away from him. She knows that he will catch her. And he does. Always.

Had he a reason, Thranduil would retch.

But there is none of both.

Instead, he looks to himself and realizes that his left hand has closed into the shape of a fist. His nails have dug deep into the peel of his skin. He knows without looking that blood-strings now ooze themselves slowly from the pleats of his palm. He turns on his heel and sees that the old woman is gaping at him, horrified.

"Milord, y-your hand—"

Thranduil doesn't speak a word, leaves the apples behind.

**oOo**

He returns to the sight of Legolas standing stiff at the largest of the vestibule windows.

He looks and sees that there is no moon to greet such night. The stars are veiled. Only wind and fog. Orange light tints itself throughout the wood of the walls, casting shadows. He wants to laugh, but he holds it back. Indeed the entire room would be struck black, if not for the crackling fire Legolas must have recently lit into the inglenook.

Such effort, Thranduil thinks.

He puts down the bottle and spins it gently by the neck.

"All these years, and still you quake at the dark?"

"It is not the dark that keeps me."

"Very well. Then what keeps you?" Thranduil gibes, bringing the bottle to a halt. But Legolas does not reply. "You threw your tantrum, and so I provided. I have purchased for you an entire estate in hopes that you may go forth and dabble into whatever silly habits you may have until you bore. You have your England, and you have your filthy garden." Thranduil pauses, uncorks the wine. "Yet you linger here, sighing into the windows like a timid little lamb expecting to be rescued."

"Do you secrete nothing more than poison."

"And if I did?" Thranduil asks him. "Will you attempt to hang yourself from the ceiling again?"

Legolas does not answer. Thranduil fills his chalice and goes to dust away the lone divan by the fire. He sits down, placing one leg upon the other. From there, he is able to see the better half of Legolas' face; pensive, far away.

Thranduil wets his lips and drinks.

It isn't long until his son's attention finally shifts from the window and more towards him, however. And though the needling taste of Montrachet does well to slake away the passing time between them, Thranduil knows that even wine will never be enough to keep the sallow of his skin at bay. His mind is weary, heavy with thirst. He closes his eyes for just one moment and sees only the man from before: the smell of him, like fleece and cinder, a goldsmith or a shoer, some mountain prince from long ago—

"You are a sad and hollow prison, incapable of feeling," Legolas tells him. "A murderous heirloom of some bygone age who refuses its doom and irrelevance. But you needn't the reminder. You are haunted by it day by day, are you not? As you sit and gloat and drink and fatten yourself with the blood of those you _butcher_."

Thranduil chuckles. He stands, and notes only that his vision has begun to blur in some places.

"Be silent now, Legolas," he says simply, placing down his chalice. "Grovel and bleat for the next twenty years if you'd like, for I am in no mood to lecture you this evening."

He slips into his cutaway in one smooth motion. Gold and black, bedecked at the sleeves. Already there is exhilaration fizzing into his veins. The colors of the room have amplified. A thousand different scents reel into his nose, and he knows all of them.

"I've matters to attend," Thranduil says. "Make aim not to wreck the furniture while I am gone."

But Legolas is already fast upon him (eyes wide and knowing), evermore fluid as a clover would sway, lithe in his cunning within the thin fabrics he so often wears. Thranduil would know this: how fairly the diamond threads of Legolas' hair drape him, like wisps of silver air. He is everything that Thranduil sees whenever he happens upon his own reflection: a proper duplication, worthy of his gaze.

"You cannot," Legolas tells him, impeding his path. "There must be another way—"

"And what way would you presume this time?" Thranduil offers. "Must I go low on my knees and feed from the likeness of livestock or sewer rats? Or should I stroll along the thoroughfares and hope to ask nicely?" Legolas is glaring at him, hell in his eyes. Thranduil wants to sneer. "Do not forget that it was you who brought us here, so far from shadow. Do not pretend as if though you did not suckle me so readily at the wrist whenever I cared enough to offer—whilst the slaughter still poured warm and _sweet_."

"I never wanted this—"

"Does the lie comfort you?" Legolas is shaking all over. His hands are fastened into fists. But Thranduil does not relent. He takes a step forward. A single inch lies between them. "Must I remind you of how willingly you tore apart the farmer's daughter?"

"She was sick and would die," Legolas insists, though his previous tone has all but weakened. "She asked it of me."

Almost desperate. Almost guilty. Almost enough.

Thranduil grins at last.

"A sixteen year old girl asked to be gutted?"

"Have you no heart? Are you so empty?" Legolas hisses. "No sense beyond your vanity?"

Thranduil's smile begins to wane.

"You will place yourself out of my way and lurk back to your window. I will not ask again."

"No."

Thranduil's ire grows by the second. His mouth tenses into a sharp line, a wordless threat honing itself into the cruel narrow of his eyes. He is taller. Stronger. He kills and has always felt nothing. Yet, Legolas remains.

"Lunatic child," he says. "Move now or I will do it for you."

"Self-loving beast," Legolas grits. "Had I the spear or the dagger, I swear I would—"

Within an instant, Thranduil's hand is lashed forward, bruised tight like a scorching brand across Legolas' throat, squeezing through both tendon and muscle with a force in his arm so massive that Legolas is left straining, writhing high upon the wall and with his legs left useless and thrashing beneath him. Thranduil's eyes glimmer with the red of the fire. His teeth are bared, fangs jagging forth into a ravening snarl.

"Will it take a mob, flames at your back to understand that we are always _damned_. Yet you wallow, flaunt about your pious crooning and think yourself sinless, righteous in the high throes of your sickening little daydreams that someday they will come to accept you. If I am the beast, then you are the coward." But Legolas does not flinch, nor does he weep. He stills into place and stares forward. If he was there before, he is there no longer. Thranduil seethes. "You think me vicious. You think me vicious when I have kept you, raised you, and did all that you could not. I should leave you to the fire, I should _break_ your neck in _half_—"

"Like mother."

The words chill into the air like mist. It is a scream that shatters glass and leaves only silence.

Thranduil allows his hand to fall back to his side. Legolas slips down to his feet, unmarred. Thranduil's expression is a sheet of solid ice. The fire in the inglenook vanishes. In the dark, Thranduil is terrifying.

With a single flash of movement, Thranduil strikes Legolas across the face.

And after a moment, he does so again.

On his ring, there is blood.

**oOo**

Snow, and the streets of the South Bank are abandoned. All is dimmed.

A lone carriage rips into the quiet. Three horses. Thranduil observes from afar.

Soon, a woman rises from its wooden carapace. One heel before the other. She wears linen and black tulle-thread on her bonnet. She is perhaps in her fifties. Her jewelry glistens, rattles with secrets of greed and acerbity. In her arms, she holds a small dog.

Thranduil waits for the carriage to disappear into the murk of the fog. When it does, the woman begins to din her way towards the central of a crossing. She is hesitant the closer she comes. The Skeldergate Bridge that follows, Thranduil sees, is a heavy burden on her mind.

He walks to where she is, tall and fair, and wordlessly offers her his arm.

"Such lovely kindness," she says, though kindness is not the only thing she meant.

When they reach the middle of the bridge, Thranduil twists her against the iron-paling as if for a kiss. She reaches for him. But there is no kiss. Only the steel of his hand wrapped around the entire girth of her neck.

He begins to press. Her screams are dry and gagged as her bones begin to break. The dog falls from her arms. It yaps and whines, but Thranduil does not stop, not until red leaks forth at last from both corners of her mouth. The dog scurries. Her eyes roll back. She is limp and broken, barely alive.

For a moment, Thranduil watches her. Then he leans in and bites.

When he is finished, he feeds her body to the river.

**oOo**

For two days he and Legolas do not speak.

And on the third, Thranduil takes to the custom of making his way through the Lendal Bridge and into the hum of the market when the light of the sun dawdles least.

Always, Thranduil sees him there: silent and pensive and swathed in the gray furs he wears, arm–in-arm with the very same woman.

With tact, Thranduil lingers, learns Thorin's habits by heart.

He is a shoer, ash on his hands. He is no York-bred, nor is he moneyed. He dreams of the mountains; hammer, cool-smelt. The goodness of craft.

Thranduil watches. And soon, it is no longer enough.

**oOo**


	3. Like Poison

i literally have no excuse other than i was half-afraid and half-dispirited someplace along the way. thankfully, that is no longer the case.

**oOo**

This night, Thranduil does not see him along the market. Nor the thoroughfare.

Nor does he see the woman.

The last of the merchants and fruit-bidders have locked up. And now there is nil but the fog-shrouded moonshine of some Saturday midnight and the occasional drunk.

Thranduil idles little, and goes instead to the apothecary, where the next district lies. There he has versed that Thorin has taken great care to visit at least once every dusk, purchasing along the occasional phial of medicine or cruet of lavender salve. Or—much the more often—a braided knot of tobacco, for the use of his pipe.

It is a filthy fad amongst plenty that flounder about most of all England, Thranduil supposes. But it has shown to be a terribly important thing to Thorin, and so Thranduil allows the fault to slip past.

In time, Thranduil arrives. A road's breadth away from the apothecary, shrouded in the eventide.

Thorin is there.

His fingers barely leaving their grasp of the shop's handle-latch, a sheaf of feverfew held in his other hand.

He is swathed in furs, as always. In cotton thread and leather strop. His hair is loose, caping to a length across his shoulders. On his hands, marks of grime. Coal and ember, a distant half-thought hinged in the lowness of his brow as he starts upon the sidewalk.

Thranduil moves then from the shadow of the crossing, revealing himself to the open lamplight of the streets. He strides forth with simple purpose. Until he and Thorin are on the same walkway and going towards opposite paths, just ells apart. The seconds pass, filled only by the echo of their footsteps. A glance away now, and still Thorin does not look up to see him.

Until he does.

It is a quick and easy meeting of the eyes. A nod of modest greeting, two strangers meeting for a second time amid an awning of causal circumstance.

But to Thranduil, it is a thing of millennia gone by.

He stops him.

He shouldn't (by all that he's seen and all that he's blooded), he shouldn't. But he does. And Thorin is perhaps a foot away from him, a candid courtesy in the way that he regards Thranduil's nearing when he slows in his steps to heed him.

"Pardon me. But I've just recently arrived and I've trouble with directions."

His curiosity, Thranduil sees, is all but captured in that second. And if he had Thorin's passing attention before, Thranduil now holds the whole of his interest.

"Recently?" asks Thorin, slowing to a finish. "You come from farther shores, then?"

"Quite," says Thranduil simply, though nothing in all of the earth could ever again be simple after having sown this. "I am only looking for the cinematography. I fear the urchin has perchance misled me."

"The Theatre Royal, you mean," says Thorin, more a statement than an actual query. Either way, it lessens his voice in its general means of generosity almost instantly, much as well as it darkens the all-scheme of his demeanor. "It is far-ways, friend. Half a league away, at least. Where the fops of the outskirts dally."

"Along the bridge, then?"

"Aye. Left and towards the river. You may follow it."

Now, Thorin moves to leave. But Thranduil himself remains and spins once on his heel and says:

"I hear it is a wonder of the civilized world. This wharf of England."

Thorin pauses, and chuckles. A measured roll of sound that tolls against the flagstone. But Thranduil understands, it is no well-wish.

"If you seek _English_ culture, friend, there are alleys a plenty this side of York," he fleers. "Gander, if you wish. Good day."

"I have offended you," calls Thranduil, and he allows his gaze to fall to the floor for the fraction of a moment, amidst the slight and apologetic inclination of his head. "As it were, I shall bother you no more."

He knows, however, that Thorin has viewed this. That the simple gesture shall be more than enough to win him from his going. Because, in the blackness, Thranduil is lucid. Vernal and fair. And much like the star-let steer of kismet, his lure is vast and his vantage, never-ending.

He knows this, has been this. And now, even Thorin will learn this.

Silence first. Then Thorin hesitates and turns. Staying.

Now Thranduil's simper is the only thing that gleams.

"You have traveled much, then?"

"I have," Thranduil tells him. "I've a fondness, for all of Europe."

"I am sure." Thorin comes closer. Looking once to his left. As if considering. And says, "An introduction is due. I am Thorin."

"Thranduil."

Thorin offers him his palm. Thranduil takes it. It is warm there, though his own is hidden over in leather-glove. For this he is thankful. Now that he grasps that he is unable to pull away even after a long enough while between them.

It is the all-steel of his eyes, muses Thranduil.

Such craft left unseen. Lost purpose traced along the sharp contours of his jaw, regality there, for he is meant more for the reign of one nameless kingdom than for the doleful mundane of all this. He is for the forming of stone, for the doings of alloy or mold. Jewels in his hands, gilt rings that must only glimmer like art on the arcs of his fingers.

A thing of yore. Thorin. Ancient in essence and once ago told. These shapes of him.

Thranduil finds he cannot move. Nor does he want to. Finds that he has already dared another step towards him, _closer_—

"Thorin, who is this man?"

The spell drifts, much into dust. Thorin takes back his hand and Thranduil is left with his own brusquely discarded, jilted of touch.

"A traveller," he hears Thorin say, allowing the woman in turn to hook herself against him. "In need of directions—"

Now there is glass pressed upon Thranduil's visage. Cracked. The creak of it, wrenching. The half-knell of nihility, the frame of them in crimson, but the world, it is red already.

"We must leave now, love," she tells Thorin importantly. "Lest Kili shed another tear before his bedtime. You know this."

Slow, Thranduil enables his hand to fall back to his side. The woman's eyes shift towards him, down and up. Several times. Green. And tremendously lashed, but they linger only for a hair's breadth of minimal lapse before simply looking back at Thorin, as if she'd only just seen absolutely nothing there at all.

She goads Thorin on going—her ribboned ropes of webbing hair pouring off him—as she pecks him gently on the cheek and leans her head against the broad expanse of his chest, and he, he _bolsters_ her there, upholds her like a gift.

She pulls his sleeve to leave. And Thorin, he does not resist her whim. He goes with her.

Though, he does turn once more towards Thranduil (amid the obnoxious belling of her laughter) and says:

"Good day."

Thranduil is left standing.

Still, among the muddied snow melting on the pavement underneath his boots.

On his tongue, an open cut. The tar of clot. Like poison.

**oOo**

A turbulence in his wrists. So strong, he nearly tears them.

He cuts through the market and does not look at where he goes. Only knows that he is going.

Deep and dark into the back-roads of the city, this retch of spite strung in pitch inside him,until at last there is the murmur of a voice that curbs him within the unlit tunnel of an off-alley.

"Milord," it says, someplace beneath him. "Have you alms to spare? I am so hungry."

He turns, looks down. A beggar there, rooted into a growing puddle of ordure and rotgut.

Now, Thranduil stops. He smiles, almost kindly, revealing the onset of tines. He tucks his hair behind the point of one ear and says:

"Stand, and you may."

The beggar thanks him, invokes him to god and all things above. And stands. With difficulty. But not much, once Thranduil extends the length of one arm and grips him in his fist, the fluttering flutings of his larynx, squeezing and twisting until at last there is a burst and a welling of spume. Meat, blood and tendon. All, teeming through the open-rents of his fingers, soiling his cuff and his glove.

In silence, Thranduil watches. And when he feels he is fulfilled, and the blood wrapped on his arm has grown cold, he allows the beggar to fall back to where he was.

There, in his puddle.

**oOo**

Sometimes the stars of York are large and white, like pearls.

Sometimes they are small and grim. A starry leer that tells him, they are so far from him.

Legolas strains his eyes, at times, to see at least one in nights such as these. In such fog and mist, there are so few that glisten from the heavens.

It is the gentle swell of dimming hues, he supposes. The allness of embrace and the fragile dottings of the firmament, looming in velvet like a blanket that warms him and embraces, much like mother's hair.

Bottomless, and in cadence. Now that the sea has been taken from him.

He leans on the balustrade of his room, counting the inches that might separate him from the lapping dells of the quiet river below. Counting stories, the creases on his father's face once he looks down and finds him there, free. And dead.

His eyes trace the scope of the river's paling. The people that cross it with their fingers grazing on the polished iron, the lacy parasols balanced in the air, women in their gowns, telling poems, doe-eyed and tittering through lashes. It is late, but people must like it this way in England. What with the men with their canes and how they grin when there is a lady there to clasp their fingers with, someone to study in secret amid the initials of a kiss.

Once, Legolas had known a kiss. Once he'd snuck from under Thranduil's wing far enough to touch the white sand of Latvia's coast, and saw her there, waiting for him by the crags of Riga's greying shore. Tender-faced, much like his own. Her fingers through his hair, he swore he'd go with her, if only he could spurn his father and leave him to his solitude.

But then the tors sung. Whispers in his dreams. And she'd fallen sick—so sick she'd been, her fingernails torn and her red lips peeling—and so he could not bare his inability to keep her, to save her and to damn her, could not bare the unwinging of his father. And so he killed her.

He thinks now that he might have been one of those people on the bridge. Had he the courage to have unclung himself from the snare of Thranduil, long ago. So that he may be one to fawn above the River Ouse and attend its winter festivals. Be amongst the thrill of summer fairs, of Yuletide fetes, pondering, perhaps, his truest hope of daybreak.

But he cannot. Now that he is here, half-afraid and caged.

His eyes veer—someplace between his thoughts—and he sees a man there; clutching on to a woman's white-gloved palm, pressing it like his heart against his chest as they walked along the overpass.

There are silver lisles in her hair, like diamonds. Glinting through the moonlight. Pale and thin she is, but he holds her upright.

He is tall. Brown of hair that fell to length and calmly jaded.

She keens.

And in the anchor of his arms, she begins to cough, so loud and horribly that Legolas can hear her almost clearly from where he stands. She bends, the lisles dangling in violent disarray whilst the man at her side lowers himself to her and begins to whisper distant comforts into her long dark hair.

That's when Legolas sees it. There, hanging from her neck and into the frozen open air:

The silvern pendant of her necklace.

So bright. An offprint of a star. And the pavement, it is stippled red with drops of blood.

The woman is indeed furled frail in malady. And the man must adore her deeply, for he cradles her in his arms as if she were to dispense at any moment, with a look on his face that might have issued the promise that he would follow her where she went.

At last, her coughing simmers. The sheen of her necklace does not. She clutches it into her palm, and in her delicate grimace, there are many tears brimmed in her eyes, but on her lips, there is only a smile that she gives him.

Legolas watches them until they are gone from the bridge.

Until there are no stars left to find and no people left on the byways. And so he takes instead to sit upon his bed, staring at the woodwork of the walls.

**oOo**

He wonders what their two names might have been.

If ever, perhaps, they would walk the bridge again.

**oOo**

Thranduil returns late in the night.

He'd left the moment the sun had gone, and since the day before, Legolas had not seen him.

There is an open indent still on the middlemost of his lip from the gilded prong of his father's ring. And though the slit of it has dried, the gash, without feeding (and oh it has been so long that the famine of his thirst has at last begun to coil and contort like a serpent tethering in stone beneath his bones), will linger and remain.

He stands from his bed, the moment he hears the door of the foyer being shackled and slammed. He exits his room, making way towards the grand ascension of the staircase.

Legolas sees his father there, but does not address him.

He stands a few feet away. Not far from Thranduil's bent and tremoring figure, viewing him in silence.

From there, Legolas sees that his father's nails have clawed deep into the wood of the dining table. That his hair—a golden veil hinged upon the air—is slightly tangled and that the sleeves of his blazer are drenched wet with red.

Had he witnessed his father like this often, he would have simply spun on his heel and gone back to his room. But it is not the case. As few things could ever veer Thranduil from his impassive demeanor. Much less, _stir_ him.

"Have you gone mad."

"Do not show your _face_ to me," snarls Thranduil.

Legolas takes a step closer then. His hand hovering an inch above his father's shoulder. But Thranduil repels even the nuance, and instead snatches him firmly by the wrist, causing Legolas to step back in recoil.

In the light of the candles, pale and towering, Thranduil is as beautiful as he is horrifying.

Now Legolas thinks that there could only be one thing in all of the world that could possibly succeed in the shapeless incensing of his father. And for a moment, Legolas recalls almost clearly in the marked pictures of his mind, the way in which Thranduil had reacted the minute he had discovered his ongoing courtship of the farmer's black-skirted daughter, just months back.

Never had Legolas beheld such violence. Such ire in his eyes, a cold and freezing undergloom, alight.

To not have what is already had when Thranduil wants it most. The irrelevance of himself like a knife at the skin of his throat. His vanity undone and his wile, foundered. His lure unhanded and his vantage, scorned.

In that moment, Legolas understands that it is envy that gnarls the all-figure of his father.

That Thranduil has found for which to _want_.

Legolas knows this.

Learns this.

And smiles.

**oOo**


End file.
